The Government has called for transparency when recruiting would be beneficiaries of the State-run Nyota Programme.
Special Protection Principal Secretary (PS), Joseph Motari, and his counterpart from Public Investments & Assets Management at the National Treasury, Cyrell Wagunda, urged Chiefs and other government officials who would be involved in the recruitment, to avoid recruiting only youth close to them and leaving out the most deserving one.
Speaking at the Migori Teachers Training College (TTC) in Migori town during a sensitization forum on the Nyota programme, the two PSs warned of severe punishment to any government official who would be found employing favoritism and nepotism during the recruitment process.
“The President, Dr. Wiliam Ruto, has put all his support in NYOTA, a project that would be obviously a game-changer over the most nagging youth un-employment problem in the country, and no one should compromise these efforts in any way,” cautions PS Wagunda.
Nyota is a five-year Kenya government initiative financed by the World Bank (WB), It seeks to unlock the potential of Kenya’s youth by addressing unemployment, expanding income-generating opportunities, and fostering a culture of savings and entrepreneurship.
The project is designed to play a critical role in advancing the country’s youth-led economic transformational agenda, by empowering young people to become active agents of national development, innovation, and long-term economic resilience.
PSs Motari and Wagunda told the forum attendees that the project targets 820,000 unemployed youths aged between 18-29 years and up to 35 years for persons with disabilities (PWDs) countrywide, with form four, level of education and below.
Some 90,000 youth would be equipped with in demand skills, through social emotional skills development and apprenticeships, as well as provide certificates to 20,000 youth with skills through the process of recognition of prior learning (RPL)
“The projects also aim to expand employment opportunities to support 110,000 young entrepreneurs nationwide, to start or expand their own business through training on life and business skills, provision of business capital, mentorship, and linkages to financial services from the Micro and Small Enterprises and Authority (MSEA) body,” explained PS Wagunda.
In Migori alone, 70 youths per each of the 40 wards would be recruited to benefit from the project, said PS Motari, who called on the local leadership, nor to politicise the project during the process of implementing it.
PS Motari further explained that at least 190,000 young people would benefit from the project through being trained on basic financial skills and offered saving incentives to encourage them to save more for their life goals, adding that the initiative would also put cogs to strengthen youth employment systems.
The Ministry of ICT above all will crave to provide digital training to 600,000 young people to help access government opportunities easily, PS Motari inform the forum that was conspicuously missed by all the region’s Members of the National Assembly (MPs) and a host of Members of the local County Assembly (MCA).
The two government officials enumerated a number of government flagship projects that that the Kenya Kwanza Government has so far implemented in Migori alone, citing the Affordable Housing, Inua Jamii and those touching women, orphaned children and the youth directly and that have clearly improved on the beneficiaries’ livelihoods.
They challenged the area leadership and the general population to accept that these noble projects have brought some equitable use of tax-payers money that have resulted uniform development in most of the nation counties.
By Polycarp Ochieng and George Agimba
